Author of the Araneya Mystery Series

Changing Places

Chapter 5

I sat on the shaky squab, my arms wrapped around my legs and hungrily searched for freedom. The wooden door on my left was old, splintery but it sported an incongruously shiny new knob.

“It’s locked, Sarah.” Mario’s voice was smooth, disciplined, as was his manner, his eyes soulless, his smirk rabid. It eluded me how I ever thought he was attractive. Cold sweat glued my shirt to my back, a river of chills swept through me and I silently cursed myself for agreeing to the man on the phone in the first place.

My eyes next slid to the window.

“Too little,” Mario said as he crouched in front of me. A small, slim switchblade met my face. “There’s nowhere to go.”

I instantly thought of the hatchway with its two large bolts. It screamedsomewhere not ‘nowhere’.

I refrained from looking at it.

“Tell me about this fool proof anti-hacking system. The one you call Osmosis.”

I automatically stiffened. How did Mario know that? Unless…. My shivers were tremors now. Mario whipped out his hand and clamped his long fingers around my throat. My eyes flew open and I gasped. He began circling my bloody wound with his switchblade, its cold tip sizzling against my burning skin. I braced myself expecting the worse.

“You have such a pretty face,” he whispered in a bone-chilling tone. I knew without doubt that he was warning me. “Osmosis. Yes or no?”

‘Osmosis’, my own personal project, did exist. But, in the wrong hands? Disastrous. Like worldwide disastrous. And as an employee of the Intelligence Bureau, I couldn’t allow that. However, I also knew that Mario wouldeventually break me.

And I couldn’t allow that either.

Despair hung heavily on me as I realised there was only one way out. The white, tiny pill stored in my wristwatch. The ‘kill pill’ as the more brash agents of the IB called it. Tears pricked my eyes as I pictured a brightly lit Christmas tree, surrounded with colourfully wrapped gifts, young squealing children and their loving dad … my future children, my future husband. The ones I would now never have. Rage, hot and wild, suddenly swept through me, along with a solid dose of determination. I wasn’t dying… damn it. Not like this. And not now.

“Yes,” I spluttered.

Mario bore the triumphant expression of the victor as he released me.

His first mistake.

I gulped quick, short breaths and rubbed the tender skin on my throat.

And planned.

I then began some moral gibberish about computer hacking, all the while leaning back on my hands. Mario leant forward. I had him hooked.

Mistake number two.

I bent my knees slightly and beckoned Mario closer. He did.

His third and final mistake.

I then rammed my feet directly into his groin. He buckled. I darted. Straight to the hatchway. I unlocked the bolts and jumped into a dark, foreign world.

“Sarah, thank god.”

It was the man on the phone. My ex. Marty.

Comments

Oh I say, what a fiendish mind you have behind the lady facade. Roseyn this is really good and full of emotion. A scene of maybe two minutes and yet one that stays in the reader’s mind right up until the next chapter. Why? Because you caused our emotions to run amok and we want to know what the hell Sarah will be doing next. Really good solid chapter writing.

Oh yes, I’ll never forget the ant scene. It put the G into gruesome. Now Sarah is rescued I wonder what being rescued by her ex will lead to. How is he involved. Great chapter. The characters are consistent and I wonder now if Sarah wishes she had stayed on Muriwai beach. Things were too good to be true for sure. Fabulous description and characterisation.